Tokyo Olympians Priyanka Goswami and Akashdeep Singh met the qualifying standards in the women's and men's 20km race walks, respectively, at the National Open Race Walking Championships on Tuesday. They will now compete in the Paris 2024 Olympics and the 2023 World Athletics Championships.
Priyanka exceeded the qualification criteria of 1:29.20s set for the Athletics Worlds in Budapest and the Paris Olympics to win the women's 20km race walk event in Morabadi.
While the silver medalist from the Commonwealth Games secured a ticket in the two main competitions, she came short by five seconds of breaking her own national record of 1:28.45s.
Bhawna Jat, a second Olympian from Tokyo, finished in 1:29.44 seconds to win the silver medal but fell short of the qualifying spots. Sonal Sukhwal finished third with a time of 1:31.03.
Akshdeep qualified for both races in the men's 20km race by clocking 1:19.55 seconds, breaking the qualifying time of 1:20.10. He achieved this by beating Sandeep Kumar's 1:20:16 national record from the Ranchi National Race Walking Championships in 2021.
Suraj Panwar, on the other hand, came within 0.01 seconds of qualifying for both the Worlds and the Paris Olympics after clocking 1:20.11s.
